Aftermath: Too Little, Too Soon

Peter Garrison

Monday, January 20, 2014 at 11:28 PM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

An inexperienced pilot stalled and crashed a Cherokee 180 during a second landing approach, primarily due to a critical failure to maintain adequate airspeed and altitude.
The article suggests that gusty crosswinds played a minor role, with the pilot's significantly slower approach speed compared to the previous landing being the main contributing factor.
The analysis highlights a common, yet dangerous, pilot tendency to pull back on controls when losing altitude, which can exacerbate a stall when airspeed is insufficient.
Improper traffic pattern technique, specifically flying a long final approach, was also identified as a factor that contributed to the pilot getting too low and slow.

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It was an old story. A relatively inexperienced pilot practicing landings got too slow on final approach, stalled and crashed.

The pilot, 56, was flying a club Cherokee 180, a type in which he had logged 13 of his 130 hours. He was making a short round-robin cross-country flight, ostensibly for practice, with landings at two airports along the way. He had landed at the second of them, taxied back and was making a second approach to Runway 17 when the accident occurred.